Why they come: Miriam Zelaya's story

Miriam Zelaya had just unlocked her small men's clothing store in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa on a Monday morning in May 2014.

Her cell phone rang. The male voice – she estimated his age at 30 – started with a polite greeting that quickly turned menacing.

She twice told him that she didn't understand why his organization would want $75 a week in "rent" from her. Finally, he said, "We have all of your information. If you don't want to cooperate, we will send some members of Mara 18. We will burn you, your business and your son."

He told Zelaya the gang knew her son's name, Fernando, and his age, 5 at the time. The gang knew where she lived and even the color of her house – yellow.

She hung up. The phone rang again for several minutes. Then a text message buzzed in: "If you don't answer, things will be worse for you. We need to come to an agreement or we will cut off your son's ears."

That call – not an uncommon one for a business owner to receive from either of two rival gangs in Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala – began an odyssey that would force Zelaya and her son into hiding for more than a year before they narrowly escaped the country with their lives and ended up in Cincinnati.

Zelaya reported the death threat to police, which angered gang members. It has inside informants.

Her son was with Zelaya, and they would drive to her sister's house. They could not stay there. Anyone known to help someone who refuses to cooperate with the gang puts themselves in harm's way, too.

"I knew I would never see my store again," Zelaya said during an interview from a basement apartment in Carthage that she shares with her son.

Her sister returned to the store and salvaged the inventory, about 30 pairs of men's pants, dress shirts, shoes and jackets, which Zelaya sold for far less than its value. A male friend from childhood who lived in another part of the capital agreed to take them in. She and Fernando would stay with him for one year, rarely ever risking to go outside and be seen. She changed her phone number.

Zelaya told her son the truth that day about what had happened and why they would be living somewhere else. "The quota," the boy said. "They were asking for the quota."

Extortion is a primary means of control and finance used by drug gang Mara 18 and its even more powerful rival, MS-13, throughout Central America, law-enforcement experts say. "Everybody in Honduras knows how the gangs operate," Zelaya said.

She decided, though, that she could no longer live in hiding. Fernando needed to go to school. She needed to work. She rented a house in another part of the city and moved. Just weeks later, her phone rang. The caller was the same gang member who'd called more than a year before.

"You thought you could escape," he said. "We're going to teach you a lesson. You can't mess with us. Go outside. Four men are waiting for you."

She called her neighbor. She said, yes, four armed men on motorcycles were on the street.

"I held my son to me and cried," Zelaya said. "I was sure I was going to die. I started to pray to God to save my son and give him a chance to live."

In a panic, she called her brother-in-law, a police officer. She did not know where his station was, but it happened to be close by. He sped there in a pickup with several other officers. The gang members drove off. That night, July 12, 2015, she decided she and her son would leave for the United States. Her brother-in-law drove them to the frontier, northwest of the city, toward Guatemala.

They hired a guide – known as a coyote – for $8,000. She had most of the money but had to borrow the remainder from a friend she has since paid back. They took a bus through Guatemala to the Mexican border at Tabasco. They spent four nights sleeping with a group of other immigrants on a floor in a house.

They did not have blankets. Nights were cold.

Handlers squeezed she and her son into a semi-trailer with 150 other migrants. It had no air conditioning or ventilation. Several people fainted from the heat on the six-hour ride toward Texas.

They crossed the border – walking through the Rio Grande River in chest-high water – at McAllen, Texas. Their guides had tied them together, 20 people in all, with a rope. They had no water and walked for eight hours before being spotted by a border patrol helicopter. They were detained at Brownsville, Texas, overnight and into the next afternoon. They boarded a bus for Miami, Florida, where her cousin lived. When they arrived, Zelaya learned he had cancer; his immune system would not allow visitors.

She would return to Cincinnati, where she had lived and worked as a housekeeper from 2003 through 2009. Zelaya sent money home to family members during those years and saved $10,000, enough to go back and open her store.

In Miami, Zelaya remembered a social worker friend in Cincinnati. She called. The social worker sent her two plane tickets. Zelaya arrived Sept. 4 and moved into the small apartment. She has gone back to work as a housekeeper.

She has an order of removal because of a missed court appearance in Florida. Her lawyer has filed paperwork for an immigration court to re-open her case, at which point Zelaya would file for asylum.

Fernando, now 7, is in school. He has nightmares about Honduras and the month-long trek north to the Untied States. He insists on sleeping in the same bed as his mother. She has nightmares, too, reliving many of the events of the past two years.

"I never wanted to return to the United States," she said. "I had no choice but to escape."

That point hit home hard on the night of Jan. 9. Her sister called from Tegucigalpa. The friend who had provided Zelaya and her son refuge for a year – along with two of his friends – had been shot dead.